Sunday, March 04, 2007

Scenarios about paying for OA

Jim Till has nicely summarized some of my recent writings on article processing fees for open access on his blog, Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure. For Jim's own comments, related links, and discussion, please see Jim's blog.

In a message on the subject “Re: Failing business models“, posted to the American Scientist Open Access Forum on February 24, 2007, Heather Morrison outlined two scenarios. In Scenario A, a funding agency permits the budget of a research grant to include funds that may be used for the dissemination of research results, “let’s say $3,000“. The grantee may choose to use these funds in various ways. They may be used for the payment of the OA publication fee or APF (article processing fee) for an OA journal (or for OA articles in a “hybrid” journal, in which only some of the articles are OA) . Or, they may be used in other ways, such as to cover at least some of the costs of attending a conference to present a paper on the outputs of the research. She predicts that Scenario A would result in “competition in the scholarly publishing industry, and ultimately better quality services at lower prices“.

In Scenario B, grantees don’t need to make such choices. Instead, the funding agency permits the $3000 to be used to pay APFs for OA, but these funds cannot be used for other purposes. She notes that “For many publishers, this amount is higher than true costs of publishing an online open access article, and allows for double-dipping (revenue from both subscriptions and processing fee charges)“. She predicts that Scenario B may lead to increasing inefficiencies in the scholarly publishing industry, and an upward spiral in APFs.

Thanks for the summary, Jim!

This post reflects my personal opinion only. It does not reflect the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.